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No Time in Times Square

Late again, wondering what time it was and scampering across and over the bodies in what looks very often in this heat like a melting Duane Hanson art installation, I looked up—correct me if I am wrong—to realize there isn’t any time in Times Square anymore. Excuse me, but what happened? After all this fuss to clean up Times Square and make it a tourist mecca, no time in Times Square? That’s like no Mickey in Disney World! Meaning, especially without the New York Times clock or ABC’s digital flashing, at least at Forty-third Street, there is no visible timepiece, at least as far as I could decipher. Remember when signage used to tell what time it was not only in New York but in Los Angeles, London, Paris, Rome . . . ? (There was a big ribbon-cutting ceremony on Monday for the newly redone Times Square area with its car-free plazas. Here is what my friend Steve Cuozzo wrote in the New York Post: “It took 25 years to save Times Square from its dark age, and it took City Hall just three months to turn it into a squatters camp.”) But never mind. I had a very good time this week points elsewhere. August is the easiest month—unless there’s a hurricane. Was touched by the charm of My One and Only, starring Renée Zellweger, which I saw at a Peggy Siegal screening Tuesday night at the Paris Theatre. The next night I had the opportunity to talk with Renée at the Museum of Modern Art, where **R. J. Cutler’**s The September Issue, about the making of _Vogue’_s September 2007 issue, was screened. She looked radiant, as always, in a Carolina Herrera dress, and I asked what her plans are this fall. I’d read she would soon begin filming another Bridget Jones movie; wouldn’t that be great for her fans? But it is just a rumor, she said. “I just don’t know about that.” And she wasn’t sure how it got started. We’ll wait and see. In the interim, go see My One and Only. Sons might like to make it a movie date with their mothers. This weekend’s social life will also center on private screenings. On Friday night, on Nantucket, the Gilt Groupe founders Alexis Maybank and Alexandra Wilkis Wilson, along with hosts Jill Fairchild, Cathy Graham, and Ashley McDermott, will show The September Issue at the Starlight Theatre on Union Street, followed by dinner at the Great Harbor Yacht Club. Saturday in the Hamptons, Peggy Siegal is organizing a screening of The September Issue—it opens nationally on September 11—at Goose Creek in Wainscott. Byrdie Bell, Fabiola Beracasa, Cristina Cuomo, Katie Lee Joel, Zani Gugelmann, and Kelly Klein are among the hosts of the evening.